What the next First Turning won't be like

[beechnut79]

(02-28-2021, 02:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-28-2021, 09:46 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(02-28-2021, 12:08 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-26-2021, 03:03 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:

(10-29-2020, 02:05 PM)Camz Wrote: I wonder how the revival of gender roles will affect gay, trans, and non-binary people. I'm really scared for that honestly. If there will be a new wave of cis-heteronormativity I'm really not gonna enjoy this High.

The 1T is supposed to be dominated by Millennials. They are certainly more dimorphic than gen X, you see more young women in dresses and young men with beards than in the early 2000s, but you can opt of gender roles by identifying as gay, trans or non-binary. I cannot imagine this situation changing during the 1T.

BTW it's a misconception that the previous 1T was right-wing, certainly the anti-communist paranoia in the US was a right-wing phenomenon, but in terms of culture the 1950s brought the bikini, the Kinsey report, beatniks, Elvis Presley, and a lot of science fiction that prepared ground for the counterculture.

I would be more afraid of the 2T, if it is indeed of the Apollonian variety, there will be a religious/philosophical movement pushing for ascetic morality as it happened during the social gospel awakening.

I would not be too concerned about it, myself. Historians have pointed out that social freedoms, once gained, are seldom reversed; at least for modern western societies. In the Social Gospel Awakening, there was a lot of experimenting with free love, more casual dress, new sports and outdoor activities, new kinds of music that opened the way to jazz, new-thought religions that are not fundamentalist and emphasize personal experience, new arts inspired by drug use, etc., along with the prohibition movement, anti-saloon movement, fundamentalist movements, etc. But then, the Consciousness Revolution also had its conservative elements. Awakenings are much more alike than they are different according to the double rhythm.

Thanks for your thoughts.

One of the exceptions though was that in many areas 18 to 20 year olds had won the right to drink. By the mid 1980s that was lost throughout the US as the minimum age of 21 was restored. More recently the age for purchasing tobacco products was raised as well. Why is it that we are the only place in the world where you have to be 21? And might the issue be resurrected in the next 2T?

16-year-old and 17-year-old youth can be extremely sophisticated and even philosophical -- as shown by the high-school students who appeared before the news media in the wake of the Parkland shooting. They can have deep and mature friendships and grieve convincingly. They can be as chilly rationalists as middle-aged people. There are high-school kids who are fully adult in intellect. But their biology is still immature. Figure that one person in 100 has an IQ of 130, and a seventeen-year-old that intelligent thinks more like a graduate student than like his peers.  

Alcohol is completely unsuited to people who are not physical adults, and physical adulthood  does not arrive for some people until they are 25 or so. That is when someone is biologically mature enough for alcohol. 

There were three problems with 18-year-old drinkers. One was that the average 18-year-old has the equivalent of an IQ of 90 for an average adult. Is there much that one fully trusts to 18-year-olds? Certainly not highly-responsible work. Probably not elective office. Second, 18-year-olds were supplying alcoholic drink to people as young as 14... and for anyone not nearly adult, alcohol is a hard drug.  Third, eighteen-year-olds are horrible drivers. I remember how I drove when I was sixteen, which was like someone eighty years old. I ran over lots of curbs   and often stopped far short of stop lines. If I drove at night I hallucinated. I am surprised that I did not get stopped for DUI even if I was completely sober. Add alcohol to the usual teenage driver (my only virtues were that I was timid and cautious) and just imagine the nightmare.   

What did remain was the eighteen-year-old vote.

But yet this is only in the US. Canada and Australia have lower drinking ages despite also being in the car culture. FCOL, in some European countries you can purchase beer at McDonald’s as they don’t have the fetish for ID checking that we do. There are a few YouTube videos that explore the pros and cons.